Ozzy Osbourne claims someone set up his wife Sharon with ‘The Talk’ exit

The late Ozzy Osbourne had thoughts about how the ouster of his wife, Sharonfrom The Talk all went down.

“The person she is convinced set her up — and I ain’t gonna name names, ’cos the last thing I want to do is stir all that shit up again — knew what they were doing, I think. And Sharon, when she feels like she’s being cornered, she’s gonna come out fighting,” the Black Sabbath rocker, who died on July 22 at age 76writes in his new posthumous memoir Last Rites.

Sharon, one of the original hosts of the now-cancelled talk show, left the series following controversy in March 2021, after she defended Piers Morgan amid backlash to his questioning the validity of Meghan Markle’s comments about mental health issues during her famous interview with Oprah Winfrey. On air, Sharon insisted that Morgan is “not racist” and said, “Did I like everything he said? Did I agree with what he said? No.” She explained she felt the need to come to Morgan’s defense, “because it’s his opinion. It’s not my opinion…. I support him for his freedom of speech, and he’s my friend.”

Things got contentious when her cohost Sheryl Underwood said, “While you are standing by your friend, it appears that you are giving validation or safe haven to something that he has uttered that is racist.”

Sharon responded, “I feel like I’m about to be put in the electric chair because I have a friend who many people think is racist, so that makes me a racist.” (Shortly after, she issued a public apology on social mediawriting in part: “To anyone of color that I offended and/or to anyone that feels confused or let down by what I said, I am truly sorry. I panicked, felt blindsided, got defensive & allowed my fear & horror of being accused of being racist take over.”)

Following the exchange, Sharon was accused of racist and homophobic behavior behind the scenes of The Talkwhich she denied. Sharon left the show a few weeks later, or as Ozzy puts it, “They ended up putting the show on pause for a couple of weeks while they did an ‘investigation’ — then two weeks later they pushed Sharon out. Just a few weeks earlier, when Sharon had been in hospital with Covid, the same people had gone on Instagram to say ‘Mrs O, we love you’. What a bunch of phoneys.”

Ozzy says “the worst part” of the ordeal was people claiming Sharon was a racist for supporting Morgan. “I can tell you without any doubt, my wife is not a racist,” he writes. “It’s against everything she’s ever stood for. Anyone who’s spent more than five seconds with her knows that.”

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He continues, “The people she worked with on that show knew that. To be stuck with that label, it was just f—ing wrong. Because you can never get a gig anywhere on TV once that’s what people think of you. It’s game over. They knew that when they took her down.”

Despite Ozzy’s claims, though, CBS said in a statement at the time that it found no evidence of a set up in its investigation. “The events of the March 10 broadcast were upsetting to everyone involved, including the audience watching at home,” the network said. “As part of our review, we concluded that Sharon’s behavior toward her co-hosts during the March 10 episode did not align with our values for a respectful workplace. We also did not find any evidence that CBS executives orchestrated the discussion or blindsided any of the hosts. At the same time, we acknowledge the Network and Studio teams, as well as the showrunners, are accountable for what happened during that broadcast as it was clear the co-hosts were not properly prepared by the staff for a complex and sensitive discussion involving race.”

Though he admits his wife “was devastated for a long while” by the events, he admires how she eventually moved on. “Me, I’d still be writhing around to this day, re-living every second of the whole thing in my head, over and over, wanting to get my revenge,” he writes. “But that ain’t how Sharon works. Once she’s cried all her tears and gets over something, she just lets it go and never talks about it again.”

Ozzy says, in fact, Sharon is still friends with some of the women who “used to work on the set” of the show, which got cancelled in 2024. “She’s an incredible woman, my wife,” he concludes. “As for The Talkpoetic justice was served in the end. It got f—ing cancelled.”